Latest articles
by Andre Vltchek / November 7th, 2018
It appears that the KSA has crossed all lines of decency, if there were ever any.
In the eyes of many in the West, it crossed them not because it has been brutally killing tens of thousands of innocent people in Yemen, not even because it keeps sponsoring terrorists in Syria, (and, in fact, all over the world), often on behalf of the West. And not even because it is trying to turn its neighboring country, Qatar, from a peninsula into an island.
The crimes against humanity committed by Saudi Arabia are piling up, but the hermit kingdom (it is so hermit …
by Ramzy Baroud / November 7th, 2018
When Israeli troops stormed the house of Palestinian parliamentarian and lawyer, Khalida Jarrar, on April 2, 2015, she was engrossed in her research. For months, Jarrar had been leading a Palestinian effort to take Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Her research on that very evening was directly related to the kind of behavior that allows a group of soldiers to handcuff a respected Palestinian intellectual, throwing her in jail with no trial and with no accountability for their action.
Jarrar was released after spending over one year in jail in June 2016, only to be arrested once more, on July …
by John W. Whitehead / November 6th, 2018
For soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming home is more lethal than being in combat.
? Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, September 11, 2012.
Not all heroes wear the uniform of war.
In the United States, however, we take particular pride in recognizing as heroes those who have served in the military.
Yet while we honor our veterans with holidays, parades, discounts at retail stores and restaurants, and endless political rhetoric about their sacrifice and bravery, we do a pitiful job of …
by Michael Pappas / November 6th, 2018
Photo Greanville Post
Physician burnout, depression, and suicide increasingly invade discussions within the medical field. Depression and suicide are more common among male and female physicians, with suicide rates 1.41 and 2.27 times greater than that of the general male and female populations, respectively. Though, the insults to the mental health of physicians begins much earlier in their career.
While the numbers may vary from study to study, some 28 percent of medical residents experience a major depressive episode during their training compared to 6 to 8 …
You can have my social worker credentials when you pry them from my cold dead hands!
by Paul Haeder / November 6th, 2018
I was at a city hall meeting in Beaverton, Oregon, the other day when a few questions I had for the presenters dropped jaws. We’ll get to that later, the jaw-dropping effect I and those of my ilk have when we end up in the controlled boardrooms and chambers of the controllers – bureaucrats, public-private clubs like Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and both political operatives and those who liken themselves as the great planners of the world moving communities and housing and public commons around a giant chessboard to make things better for and more efficient in spite of us.
Look, …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 6th, 2018
The surgical dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi has sent the military establishments of several countries into a tizz. Arms manufacturers are wondering whether this is an inconvenient blip, a ruffling moral reminder about what they are dealing with. Autocratic regimes indifferent to the lives of journalists are wondering whether the fuss taken about all this is merely the fuss endured, till the next bloody suppression. But importantly, those states notionally constituting the West may have to reconsider the duping strategy that the House of Saud has executed with the deft efficiency of the dedicated axeman.
The ranks are closing in around the …
The Trump "Resistance"
by Michael K. Smith / November 6th, 2018
With election day looming (November 6) Trump “resistance” hysteria is at its shrieking worst. Yet again we face “the most important election of our lifetimes,” or as some prefer to put it, “the second most important,” the first being the election of 2016, when “deplorables” put Donald Trump in the White House. Now, say the Trump haters, these scarcely human degenerates will have a chance to redeem themselves by voting “responsibly,” i.e., according to how their self-appointed betters tell them to vote. The persistence of this incredibly arrogant attitude is a good way to deliver a permanent Trump majority. Just …
by Mateo Pimentel / November 6th, 2018
In recent elections, it seems American voters have had little choice but to elect candidates they perceive as being “on their side,” or perhaps as being “better than the other guy.” Since the enfranchisement of women and Black Americans in the course of the last century, voter participation has been too easily circumscribed by powerful elements, and often approached as if little more than a championship football game. Damage control is simple enough when just two teams play, when only two rule books vie for predictable outcomes, and when always, always, the rich get richer in the end, win who …
by Norman Ball / November 5th, 2018
Today in America, a tug of war rages between two competing visions of the public interest. One vision is indicative of direct democracy as evidenced by the mammoth and spontaneous Trump rallies. The other is the same ole’ top-down imposition orchestrated by managed democracy‘s “invisible rulers”. Look at the obligatory apparatchiks at Obama ‘rallies’. No comparison.
The first vision is both subversive and organic, deriving its strength from the economic populism (Make America Great Again – MAGA) that Donald Trump has so effectively cultivated in his role as anti-establishment outsider. (I’ve suggested elsewhere Trump is supported in this ‘populist crusade’ by an America-First subset of the elite …
by Ralph Nader / November 5th, 2018
Let’s face it. Most politicians use the mass media to obfuscate. Voters who don’t do their homework, who don’t study records of the politicians, and who can’t separate the words from the deeds will easily fall into traps laid by wily politicians.
In 2002, Connecticut Governor John Rowland was running for re-election against his Democratic opponent, William Curry. Again and again, the outspent Curry informed the media and the voters about the corruption inside and around the governor’s office. At the time, the governor’s close associates and ex-associates were under investigation by the U.S. attorney. But to the public, Rowland was …
by Roger D. Harris / November 5th, 2018
Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are today threatened by US imperialism. The first salvo of the modern Age of Imperialism started back in 1898 when the US seized Cuba along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the Spanish-American War.
The Age of Imperialism, as Lenin observed, is characterized by the competition of the various imperial powers for dominance. That inter-imperialist rivalry led to World War I. Lenin called those putative socialists who supported their own national imperialist projects “social imperialists.” Social imperialism is a tendency that is socialist in name and imperialist in deed. Imperialism and its social imperialist minions are …
by C.J. Hopkins / November 5th, 2018
If you’re a critic of global capitalism (sometimes referred to as “globalism”), I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is, you’re not a “peddler of Russian propaganda” anymore. The bad news is, you’re an anti-Semite.
You’re probably also a domestic terrorist, or an “emboldener” of domestic terrorism, or at least some sort of terrorism-apologist. And not good old-fashioned Islamic terrorism like we used to get during the War on Terror, because that ended in the Summer of 2016, right around the time Trump won the nomination. No, the brand of terrorism you are …
by Christy Rodgers / November 4th, 2018
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is Morgan Neville’s not–very-helpful addition to the canon of “Who Was Orson Welles and How Did He Do It?” documentaries, of which I have already seen several, since I’m a fan. It didn’t make me particularly enthusiastic about The Other Side of the Wind, Welles’ simultaneously released final monsterpiece (42 years in coming!) which is the nominal focus of the documentary. The footage of Welles pastiching European New Cinema (which did a fine job all on its own) and somehow critiquing toxic masculinity by having John Huston chew scenery while slathering the bronze body …
by Jonathan Cook / November 4th, 2018
The victory of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s presidential election last week has won Israel a passionate new friend on the international stage. The world’s fifth-most populous nation will now be “coloured in blue and white”, an Israeli official said, referring to the colours of Israel’s flag.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately called to congratulate Bolsonaro, a former army officer with a pronounced nostalgia for his country’s 20-year military dictatorship. Critics describe him as a neo-fascist.
According to Israeli media reports, it is “highly probable” that Netanyahu will attend Bolsonaro’s inauguration on January 1.
The Brazilian president-elect has already promised that his …
The election will be a moment of truth for the country, and then what?
by William Boardman / November 4th, 2018
Perhaps enough Americans in enough numbers in enough places have woken up to the wildfires consuming our country. Perhaps these woke Americans will throw some water on the fires in the November 6 election. Perhaps an emerging American majority will slow the Republican burn of American idealism, decency, and justice. Perhaps an emerging American majority will elect enough new Democrats to prod old Democrats out of their lazy collusion with burning the country down. Perhaps.
Whatever happens November 6, the fires of political fascism and capitalist authoritarianism will continue to rage out of control. The conniving right has been feeding these …
by Patrick Walker / November 4th, 2018
Introduction: The Rat as a Compelling Symbol of Needed Revolt
In his recent Truthdig piece, “The Rats Revolt“, journalist Chris Hedges discusses a fable for activists just published by legendary political dissident Ralph Nader. I haven’t read Nader’s book, but it’s enough for organizers like me to know that two of the left’s leading public intellectuals are united in calling for revolt. And (since symbols are vital to movements) that they’ve given us a highly effective symbol for organizing current revolt: the rat.
With crucial strategy to discuss, it would waste precious time to dwell long on movement symbolism here. …
by David Penner / November 4th, 2018
The conflict in Ukraine has been a war of seemingly endless violence and brutality. This cataclysmic conflict, which has pitted Ukrainian against Ukrainian, marks a restoration of the fighting that took place between Nazi collaborators and partisans during the Second World War. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coverage from what Paul Craig Roberts is fond of calling “the presstitutes,” has been a deranged combination of liberal schizophrenia, outright lies, and neo-Nazi propaganda.
As noted in The Washington Times, the decision on the part of the Trump administration to give Kiev an additional 200 million dollars in military aid, brings the total amount of …
by Ellen Brown / November 3rd, 2018
October was a brutal month for the stock market. After the Federal Reserve’s eighth interest rate hike, on September 26, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 2,000 points, and the NASDAQ had its worst month in nearly 10 years. After the Dow lost more than 800 points on October 10 and the S and P 500 suffered its first week-long losing streak since Trump’s election, the president said, “I think the Fed is making a mistake. They are so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy.” In a later interview on Fox News, he …
by Shawgi Tell / November 3rd, 2018
Charter school supporters and promoters never tire of repeating the banality that “charter schools are an innovation.”
“Innovation” has become one of many hackneyed buzzwords in the neoliberal lexicon. Everyone is under intense pressure to blindly embrace “innovation” at full velocity, no matter how irresponsible.
Other closely-related and worn-out neoliberal catchwords include: “data-driven,” “results-oriented,” “performance-based,” “competition,” “choice,” “efficiency,” and “accountability.” Ludicrous phrases like “systems leader” are also appearing on the neoliberal scene.
Not surprisingly, the neoliberal world has become a comi-tragedy, a joke, a cynical dystopia saturated with dysfunction and irrationalism of all sorts; everything is upside down and incoherent, causing many to …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 3rd, 2018
His detractors and enemies have been waiting some time for this, but it must have given them moments of mild cheer. Facebook, the all-gazing, accumulating system of personal profiles and information, poster child, in fact, of surveillance capitalism, is losing users. At the very least, it is falling to that mild phenomenon in business speak called “flat-lining”, a deceptively benign term suggesting that the fizz is going out of the product.
This week, Mark Zuckerberg has been more humble than usual. The latest figures show that 1.49 billion users hop on the platform daily; monthly active users come in at …
by Graham Peebles / November 3rd, 2018
Some time ago I found myself in Paddington Central, a development of office and residential buildings near Paddington train station in London. I’d accidentally walked into the glass and metal concave and what appeared to be a public space, albeit one surrounded by the usual corporate outlets; green grass, a sort of amphitheater, people sitting around eating and drinking and a busker packing up. It appeared pleasant, but there was something artificial and menacing here. Upon investigation I discovered that it was not really a public space at all, but a privately owned square subject to undisclosed laws and regulations …
by Peter Koenig / November 3rd, 2018
Latin America is re-converting into Washington’s backyard and as a sideline is returning to fascist rule, similar but worse than the sixties, seventies, and eighties, which stood under the spell of the CIA-led Operation or Plan Condor. Many call the current right-wing trend Operation Condor II which is probably as close to the truth as can be. It is all Washington / CIA fabricated, just with more rigor and more sophistication than Plan Condor of 40 and 50 years ago. As much as it hurts to say, after all the glory and laurels sent out to Latin America – with …
by Robert Hunziker / November 3rd, 2018
On October 31st a select group of UK scientists launched a Declaration of Rebellion against the UK government at the Houses of Parliament: “For criminal inaction in the face of climate change catastrophe and ecological collapse.”
According to the scientists, now is the time to act as a planetary emergency is already upon us.
Nearly 100 British scientists, academics, and writers are willing to go to jail to make their point that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a surefire provocateur that’s already starting to decimate ecosystems.
“This is almost a cry of desperation,” says Andrew Simms of the New Weather …
by Gerald E. Scorse / November 2nd, 2018
The term “stepped-up basis” is shorthand for a tax loophole that lines the pockets of the haves while it picks the pockets of the Treasury. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost over ten years could reach $644 billion.
Let’s see how the well-off get handed hundreds of billions that should be going toward the good of all Americans.
The basis of an asset (stocks, real estate, fine art, etc.) is its price or fair market value when it’s acquired. Any increase over the basis becomes a capital gain. When holders dispose of assets, they’re taxed on …
by Binoy Kampmark / November 1st, 2018
Moving left has been a Brazilian political tendency for some time, a tendency affirmed through the 1990s and 2000s with the presidential administrations of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But this is the same country also famed for its share of murderous military dictatorships and political convulsions. The worm would eventually turn.
Between 1964 and 1985, the military privileged itself with direct interventions in civilian and political life, ensuring a line of generals for president in the name of protective emergency. The trumping of civilian rule in 1964 had come in response to the centre-left reformist government …
by John Andrews / November 1st, 2018
Although white poppies have been around for almost as long as the red ones as a symbol of remembrance a surprisingly large number of people know nothing about what they stand for. To put it in a nutshell, white poppies promote peace, red poppies help promote Permanent War.
Arguably the most cynical lie that was told to the horribly betrayed young men who were butchered in the killing fields of Europe just over a hundred years ago, in order to persuade them to become lambs for slaughter, was that they would be fighting the “war to end all war”. If it …
by Paul Haeder / November 1st, 2018
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
? D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
— Brazilian poet Martha Medieros
I work at a homeless veterans (and their families, and some have their emotional support animals here) transitional housing facility in Oregon. We get our money from a huge non-profit religious organization and from the federal government in the form of VA per diem payouts.
The job is tough, …
by Mary Miller / November 1st, 2018
CODEPINK protesters at the Women’s March on the Pentagon this October. (Photo courtesy of Jodie Evans)
What comes to mind when you hear the words “anti-war protest”? Most Americans will picture the protests against the Vietnam war in the sixties and early seventies, an era famous for its youth and student-led movements. In the decades since the Vietnam war ended, youth involvement in peace movements has dwindled. Many young people were involved in protests against the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003, but the organizers were mainly older, …
Review of The Russians are Coming, Again (“first as tragedy, then as farce”) by Jeremy Kuzamarov and John Marciano
by Ron Ridenour / November 1st, 2018
To the millions of victims of the Cold War, and those who have struggled valiantly for a lasting friendship between the American and Soviet/Russian people.
That is authors Jeremy Kuzamarov and John Marciano’s dedication of this scholarly work that should be a text for high school, college and university students in the US and worldwide.
“We write this book as the curtain slowly draws down on the American Empire,” thus opened Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in their monumental historical tome The Untold History of the United States. (Their book accompanies the 2012 Showtime documentary film in 12 episodes)…
by Edward Curtin / November 1st, 2018
Back of the world in which we live, far in the background, lies another world. The relation between the two is not unlike the relation we sometimes see in the theater between the forestage scene in the regular acting area and a scrim scene projected behind it. Through a thin gauze we see, as it were, a world of gauze, lighter, more ethereal, qualitatively different from the actual world. Many people who appear bodily in the actual world do not belong in it but in that other.
— Soren Kierkegaard, “Diary of the Seducer” in Either/Or
From the outset, the use of …
